Friday, June 21, 2002

Projected schedule for next few days:
Friday afternoon- brazil vs. england. Then down to orchard, then evening going to kai's place to watch Germany vs. USA.
If england wins i'll sport a mohawk!!!

Saturday: Afternoon- spain vs. korea (go korea!!!). Then prepare for class dinner (my parents are having some family friends over for dinner at the same time)- help with cooking and stuff. Confirm with ns guys. Class party!!! Watch the senegal match.

Touched down on tuesday. Arthur came to pick tiffany up- he looks cute!! And my parents drove out to buy some hawker food- kway teow and things- for me to eat.
Wednesday... woke up early, went for a run that slowed to a jog and slowed even further to a walk. Went to buy snorkelling equipment from Lucky Plaza- this good shop called Paris Departmental Store (sells snorkelling/diving equipment) It's at B1-116, Lucky plaza, tel: 67373628. Open Mon to Sat 10am to 7.30pm; closed on Sundays. They're helpful and will give advice and als give student discounts. Just walk through the main entrance of lucky plaza and look around- it's to your right.

Thursday- mum brought me for a haircut in the morning, (It's short n' spiky again!) i made my way home while she was perming her hair. Later she brought me to oriental hotel high tea where i ate and ate (yummy fruit sherbets!!!) and went to pick up daddy and drove down to a relative's house to visit. Since we were already at east coast we had dinner at Red House seafood- yummy!!

Later that nite i weighed myself- 75kg!! (buries face in hands) Will not eat any more food for the next fortnight!! Sub-70!

Friday- woke up at 8-ish for a jog, crossed the overhead bridge to wave at gabriel sitting at the stone table outside block 12 (Ooh! I saw which block is the cookhouse!! )... on my way back i walked thru rjc. But no teachers were around save the physics duo Sze and Wong.
Made more phone calls abt class dinner (i kept on forgetting about the prefix "6"!)

Thursday, June 20, 2002

Welcome back to the little tiny red spot on the map, Andrew ~~~. We never really did miss your presence on the blog :)

I am bushed. After watching One Piece until 1 in the morning (it's good. Average artwork, but the fun characters, exaggerated fight scenes, and fun (and mostly positive - no angst!) story overall keeps me glued to the series.) I woke up at 0600hrs, booked in at 0730, repainted 3 rooms(oh the meaningful things we do in the army), and after that ran for 2.4km, followed by about 45 minutes in the gym. This means I am VERY tired. Yes indeed. This also means my mind isn't working very well, although this is difficult to tell apart from the 'usual' state my mind is in when I'm in "booked-in" mode.

Read through the ideal guy list. If I ever made an "ideal girl" list, I think i'd probably come up with something similar too, although the words "video-games" will probably be liberally distributed through the list, like so for example:
9. nice hands. no constantly bleeding cuticles or ragged nails, especially when playing with arcade sticks for video-games..

Wednesday, June 19, 2002

"Wille: "I bet Sergeant Ong would be proud of us."
Me: "Mr Ong? There's no way he's a sergeant."
Ben: "Yes he is, he told all of us."
Me: "Yeah, maybe he's like an admin sergeant or something."
Ben: "No, he's infantry!"
Me: "Look, there's no way he's infantry."
Wille: "Come on, he's the queen of the battlefield."

Bad infantry jokes"

In what may result in (yet again), the author visiting and visiting hell on earth on me (I beg sufferance):

Another list of someone's "ideal guy" list which is yet another example of entry 44. "Drawing up elaborate lists detailing their "ideal" man and exchanging them with other similarly emotionally disturbed girls.". Though I'm not sure about the exchanging bit.

I'm not all -that- surprised when guys in my batch start smoking, they being exposed to the pernicious influence of Slavery and everything, but the girls too? Not that I have anything against females smoking (not more than I have against *anyone* smoking anyway).

I have to say, if I ever made such a list, I'd never put it up on the web. :) But then again, I've put up so much stuff, what's one more list?

@ "Nanyang Girls High is a smelly school, where girls wear watches with faces smaller than a 20 cent coin. It is the school with the most indecent uniform (bar one) in Singapore."

Evidence: *This quote is by Seah Shuqi Gabriel , an RJC year 2 student in 2001, and alumnus of NYPS and RI GEP.

1) When Gabriel was in NYPS, NYGH was at its old campus and they were next to each other.
2) Untrue at the moment, NYGH girls do where Baby-Gs
3) Considering that the NYGH uniform is white, sleeveless and pretty much low-cut, I agree. It is indecent, but bar one? Which school's is worse?

Counter:
1) NYPS and NYGH are now pretty far apart, no smell can be picked up. (NYGH has no smell in my view)
2) Baby-G wearers were spotted outside of term time and hence, school rules not in full force.
3) SCGS' uniform is similar to NYGH's, but sleeves are shorter, waist band and pleats present.

Verdict: NYGH has moved so his first point is not valid. Most NYGH girls I see wear small "20 cent sized" watches. SCGS has the more sexy uniform though not necessarily more indecent. This is due to the waist band for better defined hips and the shorter sleeves."

Well I never said the first sentence. Not exactly that way anyway. He paraphrased me so it isn't a quote.

Also seen on the site:

"Of course, I do have a soft spot for Raffles Girls School(Sec), but that is nothing of any real note. I do enjoy the gathering of
GEPpers(especially looking at people from a certain independent girls school which name starts with 'r')."

And his favourite yearbook is the much-desired, much-delayed RGS 2001 one. Some VS guy born in 1988 :)

Monday, June 17, 2002

Sunday, June 16, 2002

Was out the whole day ... again.
Friday- paper in the morning finished at 11.50am, dallied (waited for everyone to decide on lunch/dinner plans), ended up going to eat at Nam Loong's (cheap chinese restaurant in chinatown) with see seong, jer fuu, weiming, jiaming, chenyi, sarah, albert. See seong and jer fuu and I all ended up buying the same thing- san1 bao3 fan4. Then albert and i went for exuberant post-exam shopping!!!- hopped down to south melbourne market, shopping (and gawking at things including the aforementioned pigs' ears) It's quite cool! but incomparable to the luxuriously tangible atmosphere of notting hill market and camden market in london (and petticoat lane!) ....

Next destination was brunswick (we bypassed queen vic market, thinking there was no time left, which was a mistake on hindsight) heading for the nut factory. Honey coated Macadamia nuts at cheeeep prices!! But we came 20 minutes after they closed (grumble grumble grumble, not like they couldn't just open the till and let us buy a few bags, they were just lingering around the shop anyways)
Dinner at ormond, and headed down to OCF in union house. After that the bunch of them were going to watch the Korea-Portugal match in town- i headed back to catch up on much-needed sleep in the face of brooding headaches.

Saturday was ... woke up at eight to go marketing with sarah in queen vic. Came back laden with boxes for packing- was thinking of doing some shopping, but with my arms full that was a little inconvenient. It didn't help that it was drizzling. Then chadstone shopping- we finally left city at 12 something, ate at a jap restaurant in chadstone (where this bitchy waitress just *had* to make spiteful comments everytime she walked by- and it was a pretty small place so she walked by quite often) and headed back only at 5+.... Skipped dinner at jiaming's house and the fabulous (or so i heard) england-denmark match thereafter- because i had student service in the kitchen.

When i woke up on sunday i was thinking of giving sarah a call, to find out where their baseball match was so i could go down and watch. Then ... it must have slipped my mind. Or something. Lazed around in ormond (sunday brunch just makes meals such a ... draggy place- in a positive sense- everyone just chats away and talks- whiling away almost 2 hours in the dining hall) Was all dressed up n' ready to go shopping, when it occurred to me that i should call chaowan. He wasn't in. I went down intending to give him another call downstairs-ran into him in the corridor.

We sauntered to queen vic for further shopping (i spotted a cool orange jacket albert would love!! must tell him about it!!), then down to the city, taking the city circle tram. Also hopped over to HMV- i couldn't find the cd my brother wanted me to help him get (it's a bartok piano concerto no. 3, played by some specific pianist he likes)- but i did get 3 classicals for $20- a "juvenile tastes collection" of Peter and the Wolf, Young person's guide to the orchestra and Carnival of Animals (played by philadelphia orchestra- i don't think they're particularly good, victor might sneer at them); a Shostakovich string concertos 7,8,9 (shostakovich!!! my musical obsession!!); and another shostakovich piano concertos and sonata (ditto).

Walked around treasury gardens- it was beautiful. Just as we got into city, this fog started rolling in (yes, rolling in) right around us. Was chilly but worth it to see- or rather- not see- the tops of buildings next to us (and melbourne CBD buildings are pretty short for an urban district).

And attended a catholic student mass in St. Francis' church in the evening. This must be the first catholic service i've attended. It lasted exactly 1 hour and parts of the service were in bahasa indonesia, in deference to the large no. of indonesian students attending that service (hordes of them!!). And i explained to chaowan that people from Philippines don't speak bahasa (as he had assumed native people in south-east asia speak); they speak *pilipino*- most speak fluent Tagalog. Tagalog doesn't even sound like malay.

And had dinner at rose garden- it sells rice plus meat plus veg (optional), or soup noodles, for $5.50 to $6.80. Chaowan referred to the restaurant as "middle-class"- hanging at an intermediate standard, between singapore hawker centres and coffee houses. This is in terms of price/charges and quality of food.

Went to watch waking life on emily's free double pass (thanks emily!!!) with chaowan. I warned him it was an artsy film (asked lots of pple if they wanted to watch, they were either busy with exams or not interested. Arrrrgggghhh i forgot abt asking jiaming and chenyi!!) - he didn't really like it; i was enchanted by it!! Our tastes are ... different. He's looking v. much forward to watching the Mandy Moore vehicle "A time to remember".

Then we went around peeking into other theatres- caught the last 4 minutes of "Italian for beginners" and the last 20 minutes of "The last Kiss", both of which are international films and look Good. And i *happened to procure* a "The importance of being earnest" poster for myself. YaaaayyYy!!!!!!!

William ho recommended i read harold pintler. Or something. He got a knight ship i think. Harold i mean. Not william.

We did 3 sets of 6 pullups on Monday (I did 5 assisted ones in the first set and maybe 2 or 3 in the second, and was unable to continue) and my arms hurt till wednesday night and my shoulders started hurting on thursday. Gah.

A new lifeform has been spotted in camp. While marching, we saw a monkey running across the road. It's a zoo in there!

I've found another person in the platoon who doesn't shave. At the same time, I've also found out that one who apparently didn't, does, albeit rarely - 3 days after shaving, no stubble is visible. So that's 3 non-shavers and 1 occasional shaver.

I've a theory about why people don't tire of scolding the same old vulgarities - "fuck" and "chee bye" - over and over again. It's because those are the things they're always thinking about!

Now if we report sick outside camp, we must go to the A&E Departments of public hospitals. And contribute to the queue clogging them and reducing the hospitals' ability to cater to the needs of more seriously ill patients. And the MOs at Maju Medical Centre are very stingy (Steven got 1 day MC for a fever, barely enough to rest at home for a few hours). The life of a trainee is hard indeed.

I thought I'd seen Aravind around camp now and then and indeed I was right - I saw him at Cold Storage Holland V Tuesday night. Only his nametag said "Ganesh", so I wasn't sure it was him, so it was he who approached me. Apparently he's becoming a driver. Lucky guy!

2 consecutive days of night training really sapped me - on my Tuesday night off I was really drained. I hate night training! I'm going to hate field camp.

So many people are interested in going to the Guards to be medics. They must be masochistic. And they are disproportionately Malay (as other people have pointed out), I do wonder why. Maybe they like soldiery more!

I saw one fellow trainee with a Palm IIIxe. On further enquiry, I found that he had a license to use a palmtop in SAF camps, and he got it in OCS as an officer cadet (and not for official purposes too apparently). Maybe when OS5 models come out...

Ever since Khairuldin chided me for saying "Durong Senjata" (Eggplant Rifle. cf "Duron"), I've decided that I'm frustrated with drill commands being in Malay and one day I gave them in English. I've yet to figure out a nice sounding way to command "Halt".

From an angle, one of our female instructors looks a bit like someone Someone Else calls 'Boy Crazy'.

Yew Jin's a bit blur as an i/c - one day, he gave the halt command ('berhenti') when he meant attention. On 3 occasions throughout the day.

Most of the SCDF personnel look quite chubby. Maybe it's the uniform. Or the fact that they only ever go to the cookhouse, the canteen or stay in their room pretending to do work :)

Steven finds a way to link sex to everything. Seeing the BCS tentage, he remarked that you could have a gangbang in there. This is why I am sorely disappointed by the male gender.

Since I bounce so much when I march, they have dedicated part of a song to me - the Gummi Bears' chorus. Unfortunately they only know one part:

I cannot say that I've seen this, but I have it on good authority (an eyewitness) that Khairul ate a few large green grasshoppers live. And his tongue was stained green after that. Yeech.

We had nothing to do one day and were waiting in the training shed, and the group I was with started talking about, first pornography and then prostitutes. Since it was the only conversation that was going on in English and I wasn't in the mood to take a catnap, I listened for a while. All of them seemed to be very into the two, why, especially the latter, I know not, most especially because of the lack of emotional gratification. But they seem to like it.

Seetoh observed that "All the bugs here are mutated". Indeed. We have giant ants with white stripes, giant spiders, centipedes that have the texture of Yuppi snacks, miniature scorpions with wings and many many more. Perhaps they have been mutated by something.

The ever efficient SAF outdid itself again by forgetting to indent dinner on Friday (as frequent visitors to this humble weblog will no doubt know), which brought joy to our hearts as we got a night off. However, it outdid itself by not indenting breakfast and lunch on Saturday, which made us trainees very happy again as we got to slumber for an additional 45mins in the morning, and non-guard duty personnel (ie not me) booked out that much earlier.

On Friday, while we were waiting for them to resolve our dinner problem, we were restless in the training shed, when I decided to go sit on a bench inside the "Trainees Mess". Now, SMM is such a wretched place that Officers and Warrant Officers have to share their mess with Specialists. So how could trainees have their own mess? Our little used mess it this small room by the side of Platoon 3's training shed. It's walls reach almost to the rood of the training shed, and there are no windows, making it rather stuffy. It is furnished with 2 benches (with lots of lizard shit on them), a small ceiling light and has plenty of rubbish strewn on the floor (there used to be more before I, in a fit of dilligence, cleaned the place a touch during area cleaning), and on the door is pasted a piece of paper with the words "Trainees Mess!" written on in black marker pen. Well, so I entered the "Mess", closed the door and sat down. After a while, I heard "Fall in" and so opened the door. Or tried to at any rate - a bench had been placed across it by my mischievous platoon mates. After they'd removed the bench, letting me come out, Sergeant Kan, our commando, went in to take a look, and they tried the same trick on him. Only, as Roe had just finished sliding the bench across the door, he came climbing down the wall, having used the bench to jump onto the top of the walls of the room.

The chicken backsides we are served at the cookhouse have become bigger nowadays. Though they are still chicken backsides. I do wonder where they get all these weird chicken parts (collectively brought under the label of 'chicken backsides') from. Probably the same place Monty's (RI canteen vendor company from 1996 to 1999) got them!

We got ice cream for the third time since our course started. Only the second, they'd run out (allegedly because some people took 2 or 3 servings). I wonder how much less SFI is paid for SMM food than BMT food (or indeed SISPEC).

Steven has one of the smallest cordless phones in the world. He brings it to camp and talks merrily away on it. It must also be very powerful, for I cannot see where the base station is. Of course, he gets very upset, for he believes that it is a mobile phone, but I believe he got cheated by the salesman :)

One of the Bruneians, Fazidah wears a rather strong perfume whenever she goes for training. On my enquiry on why she does so, she tried to stab me with her bayonet. "Perfume is half my life". Presumably she meant that she's been wearing perfume half her life.

They found a novel use for the orange tank top they got for Folie for his Miss SMM role on CMC night - they cut it into half and used it as an orange cloth for cleaning rifles. Mmm.

Camo Cream's now a credit item at E-mart, like jacknifes (however you spell it). Yeh. The jackknifes don't say "SAF" on them, so theoretically I could buy 40 a year with my credit and resell them! They're not bad quality too - the blade's very sharp.

We had a Light BCS mode practice, and I was detailed as a Combat Stress Reaction (CSR) casualty. It was fun yelping, screaming and running all over the place! And sort of fun being sat on, restrained and tied with toggle rope.

Guard duty:

I was actually supposed to be on the "Fire Piquet" detail - 4 people who book in on weekends to sleep. However, Nicholas claimed that his knee hurt, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and applied the logical extension of the Golden Rule - Do unto others what you would want others to do unto you - I still remember, during BMT when my feet hurt but Ah Seng refused to let me be a sentry. So he became one of the fire piquet personnel (though this later came back to haunt him - more later).

Our guard commander was very nice, and the 2i/c, 3i/c and Duty Officer are all very relaxed, and our Camp Orderly Specialist, who's 'wayangs' a bit sometimes was nowhere to be seen, so guard duty was quite peaceful. We didn't even have a turnout, even though the guard commander said we'd have one just for practice. Of course, that might be due to the fact that we plied the guardroom sergeants with Pizza! Yes, we ordered Pizza. 2 stuffed crust ones from Pizza Hut (with Garlic Bread and Pepsi, coming to ~$50) and 2 from Malay 2 for 1 (coming to ~$36). Conclusion? Malay 2 for 1 provides very good value! Even if it is a little smaller and less tasty. Of the 4 pizzas ordered, 2 had beef so I took only 2 slices, but Jeremy handed me another slice of Malay 2 for 1 Hawaiian (though they'd sprinkled crushed red pepper on it, which was very hot {I swear, it's is not just crushed red pepper, it's too hot to be just that}, so I tried to brush some of it away). So I sort of got my $8 worth. They actually ordered KFC chicken and yet more pizza, but I was full already.

This time I got to prowl with Daniel [Subagio].

While prowling I heard a hollow, sonorous sound. It turned out to be a squirrel. So now I know what they sound like!

All the cars with MID license plates are horrible looking, run down, dreary coloured station wagons. I wonder why anyone would want to drive one, even if it is probably cheap.

In some areas I am remarkably (even ridiculously) observant, seeing all sorts of trivial details, but in others I seem to be blind. Specifically those concerning observations of people, of their characters, actions and appraising them. People always notice things I don't. Maybe it's because I am less critical, and more tolerant of perceived faults. Or my skill's simply not there :)

When it came to dismounting time, we found to our horror that of the 13 guard and fire piquet personnel supposed to be taking over us, 5 had taken MCs outside and only 1 standby had arrived. So after some hand wringing, the 4 fire piquet personnel stayed back to fill out the numbers while the 9 of us guards went home. Though they did leave only 2 hours later than us (11+am, versus our 9+am, though we're actually supposed to get out of camp by 8am!). But the duty officer did promise them compensation - off passes from camp on Monday, stretching as long as after lunch to 10pm.

After 4 guard duties in SMM, I conclude that, especially in SMM, guard duty serves no purpose but providing a way to punish erring (whether in reality or the perception of superiors) trainees and permstaff.

Quotes:

"Sergeant, I want to become a lifeguard but I cannot swim"

"A very good afternoon, gentlemen. [Trainees: Good afternoon Master] It's 'Good Morning'. I wanted to see how blur you all are. Indeed you all are very blur."

"[On a rainy day, in the training shed] Okay, no questions? Then just sit here and enjoy the rain."

"I want to become a lifeguard, it's fucking lobo. First, it's eight to five. Second, you sit in the chair and sleep all day. Wait for the kids to come and swim. Thirdly, you get to play with the speedboat."

"A man should be obsessed by sex (with)"

"All the gifted people have some problem"

"[On me] You have a photogenic memory (photographic)

"[Me: What's so good about prostitutes?] I think you need to see a doctor."

"[On SMM] All the bugs here are mutated."

"[Sign] Do you know that Logisticians embrace the SAF Core Values in their work..."

When I took a taxi back on Friday, the taxi driver charged me only $8 instead of $8.40 because he felt bad about taking a longer route. Nice guy.

Yong Chin pointed out the difference between a "night off" and a "night out" - you get to stay home overnight for the former. Oh well.

My brother-in-law, Mr Intelligent, has done it again. He's entered (or tried to - he was cussing so I wasn't clear on the details) a cashcard-only carpark.